Use of "Open Source" wording without using an Open Source license

[ssddanbrown]

👋 Hello! I saw you recently changed your license from MIT to ELv2. Just wanted to advise that this license is generally not considered to be "Open Source" as per the common definition so usage of "Open Source", as used throughout your repo and website, could be seen as misleading. Instead, projects with such licenses are commonly referred to as "source available".

A similar case can be seen with n8n. Although that thread is fairly heated, it can provide a lot of the context for the expectations in using "Open Source" as a term.

[Aeolun]

Hmm, yeah, I can't say I'm happy to see that the project that I started using when it was licensed as MIT (one of the reasons for choosing it) has silently changed out to ELv2.

It's not that I don't understand the motivation, but it's not the same thing at all. There's very little open about the ELv2, it's full of restrictions.

[deleteman]

Hey @Aeolun, we appreciate your feedback and we're sorry to read you feel that way!
However, we didn't switch silently to ELv2, we actually discussed it during our April community call, you can check out the announcement here: https://youtu.be/DK8Z7TZfnyk?t=442 (the link will take you right to the moment where Mehdi explains about the change and the reasons behind it).

Is there anything in particular that you'd like to do with OR or you were planning on doing that this new licence prevents you from doing? We'd love to know in case we have to consider another licensing update.

[ssddanbrown]

However, we didn't switch silently to ELv2, we actually discussed it during our April community call, you can check out the announcement here: https://youtu.be/DK8Z7TZfnyk?t=442

While not silent, that seems pretty darn quiet if that's the only place of mention for a pretty significant change of terms.
It looks to have been changed in a minor release version, with no notice/advisory in the release notes, and no announcement/notice on your very active blog.

Even if the license change did not affect an existing users usage of the project (Which it could have done), it can still be an considered an important change to many people, even just from a philosophical view. For me a change from a typical OSD-aligned Open Source license, to a license such as the ELv2, indicates that a change to putting business intentions before the openness of the code and freedoms provided to the users. Not that I'm specifically against that or saying it's wrong, I can appreciate you want to protect your efforts on the project, but it is a noteworthy change that your users (and contributors) should be made aware of.

[Aeolun]

@deleteman Thank you for being open to discussion. I don't think announcing it during a community call is really a solid way to make sure all your users know of it. I don't necessarily watch or attend community calls. What I do do is read the release notes for every release, and those (at least v1.5.4, which seems to be the first release after the change) do not mention any license change.

I also receive a newsletter every month, and that one (which mentions the v1.5.4 release) does not mention anything about a license change either.

Of course I'm not planning to do anything with OpenReplay that would cause an issue with the license. Unfortunately, I work for a huge enterprise that does not look kindly on things not licensed using MIT (+the very short list of other approved licenses). Anything licensed under MIT I can use no questions asked, and contribute to without causing any issues. Everything else causes questions to be raised (and the process for approval to be much longer/more painful).

[deleteman]

Hi @Aeolun, thanks for the feedback.
I think we all agree that we didn't do the best job communicating this change. It wasn't due to ill-intention, but rather our inexperience. The community call where we share this information was our first one, and we should've also added this to our release notes and the newsletter (as you very well put it).
We've ammended the release notes in the hope that any other developer making the migration can easily find this information now, and we'll keep this in mind for future similar updates.

As an added note, I think it's relevant to mention that the ELv2 license doesn't apply to the entire OpenReplay repository, there are sections of it that are MIT (like the tracker plugins).

We appreciate the feedback you've provided here and we'll keep it in mind for next updates!

[micseydel]

I think we all agree that we didn't do the best job communicating this change. It wasn't due to ill-intention, but rather our inexperience.

Has any action been taken in the ~10 months since this came up to demonstrate positive intentions? I wouldn't say amending the release notes counts. This really looks like when you made the change you hoped no one would notice (ill-intention), and when someone noticed you hoped that would go away...

I would not have known of this problem if not for this reddit comment, so thank you to @ssddanbrown for continuing to speak up.

[ddevault]

Any updates on this? You're of course free to use any license that you want, but you cannot brand something as open source which is not.

[ddevault]

This is still a problem, @deleteman

[thibaultmol]

March 2023 and the project is still advertised as open source....